Director Joshua Marston: Makes a Successful Leap with Maria Full of Grace

By Akiva Gottlieb

Maria Full of Grace
— striking, suspenseful, unflinching — is one of the best films of
2004. Chronicling the journey of Maria, a Colombian girl who decides to become
a "drug mule" by transporting pellets of heroin to the United States,
the film works both as a coming-of-age story with unsentimental depth, and as
a brilliant, unflinching study of the international drug trade. This, Americans,
is how you get your drugs.

This remarkably assured Spanish-language
feature is the debut film for L.A.-bred writer and director Joshua Marston.
But how exactly can a young Berkeley grad tell a story so far beyond the realm
of his personal experience?

Marston, who says he was "always
interested in Colombia," elaborates: "I’ve been following the
news there. I’ve been interested for a long time in doing something on
the drug war. When I make films, I’m less interested in looking inward
than at looking outward — to go out into the world, do research, talk to
people and hear their stories.

"I wanted to humanize who a drug
mule is. To take this newspaper headline and understand it from the inside,"
adds Marston over lunch at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills, far removed
from the squalor of Maria Full of Grace.

"It’s important to understand
that Maria’s decision is not over-determined," continues Marston.
"This is not a story about a girl who’s so desperate and so poor economically
that she has to swallow drugs. This is a girl who made a choice to swallow
drugs. She wants something else out of life [beyond the promise of money]."
Marston also believes that Maria’s desire, "is what allows people
to relate to the film on a more universal level. It’s about a 17-year-old
girl trying to find her place in the world."

In the film’s stomach-churning centerpiece,
Maria has to swallow dozens of latex-coated pellets containing heroin. Marston
refuses to give away the pellets’ secret ingredients, saying only that
they were "edible." To add to the realism, Catalina Sandino Moreno
(who plays Maria) had to swallow a number of pellets in a single take. Marston
also swallowed a few pellets. "I wouldn’t ask my actress to do anything
I couldn’t do myself," he says.

Maria Full of Grace is an ambiguous
title for a film without religious aspirations. But what does the title mean
to Marston? "Hopefully, it’s a poetic reference to the fact that this
is the story of a girl who is able to find her own grace. Ultimately, Maria’s
growth comes from within, literally and figuratively," he says.

Yet finding the right actress to play
Maria was a "long struggle," Marston recalls. "You always hope
that your character will just walk through the door one day, that it’ll
just be automatic. Fortunately, the producers were willing to be patient with
me, to the point where we had already postponed the shoot when [Catalina] finally
came in. It was immediate."

Colombia, because of media sensationalizing
and general ignorance, is a country that many Americans know about primarily
because of the drug trade and notorious criminals like Pablo Escobar. It’s
not a place many Americans consider visiting. And Maria Full of Grace
probably won’t boost its image.

"It’s sort of disappointing
that the perception in the United States is that Colombia is a horrific place
to live — that no one would ever would want to go there. I understand that,
though, because I had that feeling before I visited Colombia for the first time.

"In many respects, it’s a country
like any other; daily life goes on," says Marston. "People there find
a way to live in an incredibly difficult situation. People in Colombia talk
about living in New York City with the same amount of fear as we have when talking
about Bogota. Ultimately, what we’re talking about is fear of the unknown."

Audiences in Colombia, however, have
welcomed Maria Full of Grace with open arms, impressed that an American
filmmaker would take such interest in their daily struggle. Unlike the majority
of navel-gazing film school grads, Marston is a young director with a startlingly
expansive vision.